The present disclosure relates to optical computing devices and, more particularly, to optical computing devices that use integrated computational elements to determine unknown interferents in a fluid being monitored.
Optical computing devices, also commonly referred to as “opticoanalytical devices,” can be used to analyze and monitor a substance in real time. Such optical computing devices will often employ an optical processing element that optically interacts with the substance to determine quantitative and/or qualitative values of one or more physical or chemical properties of the substance. The optical element may be, for example, an integrated computational element (ICE), also known as a multivariate optical element (MOE), which is essentially an optical interference filter that can be designed to operate over a continuum of wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum from the UV to mid-infrared (MIR) ranges, or any sub-set of that region. Electromagnetic radiation that optically interacts with a substance is changed and filtered by the ICE so as to be readable by a detector, such that an output of the detector can be correlated to the physical or chemical property of the substance being analyzed.